Standard 5: Middle level teachers understand and use the central concepts, tools of inquiry, standards and structures of content in their teaching field and create meaningful learning experiences that develop you adolescents' competence in subject matter and skills.
As teachers, we are fortunate in that we have means, such as the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and the Common Core, to dictate what content needs to be presented to our students. Accordingly, it is never a question of what to teach; rather, teachers can focus more on the various tactics to present the information to our students.
When I am instructing my students, I present and reinforce the information in a variety of ways. When covering a chapter, I will typically assign the textbook created reading guides as homework to enforce the students' reading and interpreting of the material. I also create a PowerPoint or Prezi to assist with my lecturing and guided notes. There are always supplemental activities to focus on specific topics such as poster-making, skits, and creative writing. Lastly, the students have review sheets as well as review games such as Bingo or scavenger hunts to reinforce the material before the assessment. Examples of the lecture/notes PowerPoint and a review game are found above.
